Letting it go

and chasing waterfalls

It's the first day of 2026, the year that will transform everything.

I woke up this morning, lit the candles, and snuggled into a quilt here in front of the fireplace. I poured a giant oversized cup of coffee into my favorite mug, and I did my favorite morning meditation…thinking about how grateful I am.

In 2025, my husband and I went in on a shared house purchase with my daughter and soon-to-be son in law, and it has been amazing getting settled into this cooperative home. The year has flown by! We watched them use their carpentry skills to create a completely new little kitchen in our downstairs apartment. We built a terrific chicken coop for our brood outside and put together a giant pantry full of staples, water-glassed eggs, and home-canned goods from the biggest garden I have ever grown. It has been so special. I'm filled with gratitude for our little corner of the world, and I'm already excited to start my seeds for this year's garden. I have big plans, including learning to keep bees.

In the same year as this wonderful personal move has expanded my life in delightful ways, I have had to watch in horror, (along with the rest of the world,) as our democracy was dismantled by a criminal cabal of Nazi Christo-facists. I've watched our standing on the world stage crumble, illegal secret police terrorize our communities and neighbors, and our economy tumble. I worry about affording health insurance. I'm sick about the injustice, the bigotry, and pain these assholes have wrought. Yet at the same time I see such a change and strength emerging from good people in spite of it, and because if it.

As I look to the new year, which I know in my gut is going to be both super chaotic and wildly transformational, I feel more clearly than ever that our personal transformations mirror our global transformations. As we change and grow, so, too, does our world. With the ending of one thing comes the space to have a new, better-fitting thing. I thought about this last night when I watched Zohran Mamdani take his oath of office in the New York Subway. It seems on the surface unconnected to me, a 56 year old artist in Seattle with chickens and big garden dreams. But the excitement and hope it represents is a vibrational match to what I have been cultivating in my heart, and dreaming of, and loving into existence. It's personal. It's global. It's connected.

As we are connected.

So on this New Years Day, I'm thinking a lot about the issue of making space, and letting go of things that no longer fit. I'm ready to grow beyond the boundries I have sometimes felt hobbled by, both inside of my micro-world, and outside of myself, in our shared macro-world.

Here are some things I'm personally letting go of, with the hope that it may resonate or inspire somebody else on their own path.

The first thing I'm letting go of is a belief that “I need to figure things out.” That sounds like a small thing, maybe, but this belief has kept me stuck in psychological Purgatory in a hundred ways.

For instance, I can’t figure out how to help my son. He is my yougest, almost 25, 6’4, and is one of the most handsome men I've ever seen. He workes as a concrete finisher and is frankly ripped. He has a gorgeous smile, and curly blond hair he's always trying, and failing, to control. He also struggles with addiction. Although we have desperately urged, and begged him to get help for anxiety and what is probably undiagnosed adhd for years, he self-medicates. He can be rageful and violent, and his addictions exacerbate this. As a teen, my husband and I were unable to steer him away from addiction and get him to accept help, and had to eventually kick him out of the house because we honestly thought he might hurt or kill one of us, or all of us. We tried everything, and yet, have never been able to figure this thing out and convince our precious son to change his trajectory.

I never wanted anything more, or tried at anything harder in my life than I tried to be a good mom to my kids, especially because my own family growing up was so fucked-up. It's been supremely painful to understand that I can’t figure out the one thing I want most in this world. It is my very deepest pain, and it has brought me to my lowest points.

Although talking about my son is difficult, I know so many other people face similar heartbreaks, often alone and with quite a bit of shame. Yet we must grasp the truth; we can’t solve people or take away their path, no matter how much we love them. My hope is that if you're reading this, and also have pain from a difficult relationship that you can’t figure out, that you will know that you are not alone, and that not knowing what to do is okay. Figuring these things out is just not always possible.

The second thing I've decided to let go of is a bunch of weight. I've been stuck in a loop of trying to figure out why I have carried it around for so long and why I can't get rid of it. Is it hereditary? Is it life-style? Is it related to feelings of danger in my childhood? Am I protecting myself? Is it a result of self-loathing, and not loving myself? And why don't I love myself? Is it this toxic, misogynistic society? Am I afraid? Am I actually just lazy after all? Why do I self-sabatoge? Blah, blah, blah, around and around it goes, circular thinking that leads nowhere.

It doesn't fucking matter. It's probably all of these things and also none of them. I have never figured this out, and I am tired of thinking about it. The only really good question is, what do I want now, and why do I want it?

Well, what I really want now is to be able to hike up any beautiful mountain trail or see any spectacular waterfall I hear about on YouTube, or read about on a blog, and not have the slightest fear that I might not be able to make it. I also want to be strong for lots of blackberry clearning, digging and gardening, and I want to feel really healthy, have lots of energy, and get in and out of my kayak more easily. I also, notably, don't want to be pre-diabetic anymore.

I did get started early on this New Years goal, and have lost 32 lbs so far since September with the help of compounded Tirzepatide. I have about 70lbs more to go.

If you are not familiar with Tirzepatide, it’s a gip/glp-1 agonist, and it has been like a kind of miracle in my life. It works by slowing gastric emptying, and it improves insulin release, which evens out blood sugar. It makes people feel easily satiated as well as reducing their appetite and “food noise”, a term I had not heard, and did not realize I struggled with, until I took this medication. Holy cow, what a difference in my head.

I did not expect Tirzepitide to have such a remarkable effect on me or on weight loss, because I've been around the proverbial block with dieting if you know what I mean. But since starting it, I feel like a different person, and the weight loss is only a part of the difference. For one thing, I have stopped drinking entirely, as someone who drank wine almost every night for probably 30 years. This was *gobsmaking* to me. I wouldn't have believed anyone if they had told me I would lose my taste for wine and alcohol in general. (An interesting side note is that my compounded medication costs almost the exact amount I previously was spending on wine in a month.)

I am also eating the healthiest diet I have ever eaten -ever- in my life and don’t feel even a little bit deprived or desperate. I'm going to the gym, finding things I enjoy doing, and my knees and hips feel better than they have in years, as Tirzepatide apparently also helps with inflammation. I feel really good, really steady, and I feel myself changing . I know that in 2026 I will let go of most, if not all, of the rest of my unwanted weight, and create a different way to live and eat so that no waterfalls are off limits. I'm so excited and grateful that I tried this tool, and stopped trying to figure out the exact reasons for the problem in the first place.

The last biggie I'm letting go of is the unhelpful belief that there is “one perfect path” to the things I want and the places I want to experience. I am not sure when I picked up this belief, but what it causes me to do, is second, third, and fouth guess myself until I'm just...stuck in a loop, dejected, and mentally exhausted. Is this the RIGHT thing for me to do? Is there a better thing I should be doing, and I will regret having done this instead? Is this the most important thing to spend my time on? Shouldn't I have done this other thing MONTHS ago?? How can I decide which way to go? Should I wait until I'm sure?

Again, this is psychological Purgatory, and it all stems from a dumb belief that I know is not actually true.

I mean, I've lived long enough to know that there are no definitive right or wrong paths in this world, there are just experiences we manifest to know something about ourselves. The paths aren't sitting there, with predetermined results, waiting for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to walk along them and get their big prize at the end like Publishers Clearing House or something.

We create the paths we need to create so we can learn the things that path can show us, like my son with his addictions, or me with my weight. It's personal, and it's why we came here. The struggle is the path, the path is always perfect, and the path always leads us to what we want to be, know, or have.

When we're done with that particular path with it's particular lesson,

we let it go.

So, let’s raise a glass. Here's a toast to letting go of the unwanted, creating new, uplifting paths and inspiring transformations, and to absolutely chasing our own waterfalls in 2026.

I can't wait to see what we create together. Everything is going to change.

I love you guys!

(The left picture is Jan 1st, 2025, and the second is Jan 1st, 2026)